This sky is a lovemaking—tangerine fire with bridges of cloud, the spread
legs of the poplar grove, open to all that is blue. Here, someone has built a temple
on a drift of wind, where mallards and grouse worship time’s open mouth.
Shape me like a kiss beneath this sky. My hands are blossoms, fine mist. My heart
is a rowboat, rocking in green waves. My thoughts are birch leaves, carried
on a waft, holy with the work of light through a dapple of aphid bites. Would
it be okay if I called this God? If I said time is an illusion? If I pointed out
the way clouds have begun to undress the mountain? There are bridges
inside the minutes, towers inside the hours, windows at the edge of day.
The months swim with a slow precision into years, and always, the sky keeps
being the sky. And this God we love stays too naked to wear skin. See the tangle
she’s made of her limbs? Her right leg is a riverbank, and her left is the start
and end of night. Her arms are the tides that pull you in and push you out again.
Kneel to the temple on the wind. Listen to the voices lingering in the trees. When
they moan, it is your name they call. You can answer with touch. You can call them
God or sky or self. You can carry them with you when you row your sunset back home.
